Issue 7, February 21, 1996

This article contains older information. Go here for newer information on website design and usability.

• Why in the World Should Anyone Come to Your Web Site?
• A Small Business Model, by Hank Heath

Why in the World Should Anyone Come to Your Web Site?

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

Why in the world should anyone come to your Web site? In your answer to this question lies your success at marketing on the Internet.

You see, a Web site is like a store built on a dead-end street. Nobody comes by accident. Either they deliberately type in your URL (Web address) or more likely they click on a link they find in a Web search engine or elsewhere.

Like any business, so long as you have a good product or service, the more people you can get in the door, the more sales you're likely to close. To get more people in the door you must understand people's four motivations to surf the Net.

1. Information Motivations

Presently, the great bulk of Internet users are looking for information. This takes two forms.

Often people come out of curiosity. They see a banner ad for your Web site on a high traffic site like Yahoo or the Internet Mall, and out of curiosity they'll click the rectangular box and land in your Web site. Perhaps you've come up with an intriguing title or sentence which appears on a Web search engine. They may click on the link just to satisfy the curiosity you've aroused. You might raise curiosity in traditional advertising in a newspaper, magazine, or brochure as you give your Web address. They may come once out of curiosity, but they won't come back unless you offer content they need.

Others come with a deliberate desire to learn. They have found that you offer information about a product, service, or industry. Perhaps you have an archive of articles or past newsletters with valuable content. Perhaps you offer links to information hosted on other people's Web sites (such as our "Small Business and Effective Web Marketing" Center, http://www.wilsonweb.com/webmarket/).

Freely available information is exploding on the Internet. A year ago you'd be hard-pressed to find up-to-date news outside of commercial on-line services. Today you can find hundreds of newspapers and magazines on the Internet. The Web surfer is the winner, but for us to compete for customers' attention, we may have to give away information we used to sell.

Nevertheless, if you offer a rich source of information, you'll attract a steady flow of customers, and some of them will do business with you. If you think about it, that's the strategy we use at Wilson Internet Services to attract your attention.

2. Entertainment Motivations

A second motivation that drives Internet users is entertainment. This may slop over to information, since for some people learning is entertainment. Web sites which are designed to entertain are rich in graphics. (I suppose that pornography on the Internet is a sort of perverse entertainment.) As people's access to the Internet gets faster than 14.4K -- say an ISDN connection or access through cable TV wiring -- the entertainment use of the Internet will skyrocket. You'll see an explosion of movies, videos, games, etc. But today the entertainment comes in the form of the fun, the bizarre, the unique. Java applets (small animations you can see if you have a Netscape 2.0 Web browser) are designed more to entertain than anything else at this point. But they do entertain, and people will visit your Web site just to see your Java application in early 1996. I doubt that the novelty will last forever.

3. Economic Motivations

Economic motivations are the next category, and I believe will be a growing one. An increasing number of people are doing research on the Internet (information motivation) as well as shopping for specific products. What would motivate a person to purchase something over the Internet? Impulse, convenience, choice and availability, quality, price, security? (See Hank Heath's article, "A Small Business Model" following this one.)

Give people a reason to buy from you. If you can't compete on at least some of these points you won't do much business on or off the Internet.

The other side of the economic motivation is people's attraction to free products. A good part of the shareware industry is based on giving away fully or partially functioning products with hopes of enticing the user to register or pay for an upgraded product.

Information is sometimes the hook. PC Magazine's early strategy was to offer an article or two per issue as a way of getting you to come to their Web site, and then show the complete table of contents of the current issue with an opportunity to subscribe to the magazine itself. (Now they offer a large part of the magazine free on their Web site, but sell advertising space.)

Contests are another form of the same motivation, though you still have to advertise the contest heavily to get people to come to your Web site to participate.

The widely-used strategy in a nutshell: offer something for free to get them to come, then offer something for sale.

4. Social Motivations

A fourth motivation that draws people to the Internet is social, human interaction, closely related to the entertainment motivation. Chat rooms, news groups, and mailing lists proliferate on the Internet. The Web form of these is an interactive Web page where one can read others' messages and leave one's own on a number of topics. One of the freeware versions of this type of software is the cgi program HyperNews. You can also find commercial packages such as net.Thread by net.Genesis.

If your Web site is the chat center for your industry or product or service, it will attract people. The downside is that you may find yourself spending time deleting frivolous or derogatory comments that you don't want gracing your pages.

You might consider hosting a mailing list of customers or users. It provides great customer support and sparks repeat sales, though you'll spend some time to keeping the address list clean and moderating the discussion. As an adjunct to a Web site, this can be a powerful tool.

Strategies

Where do you begin? Write down a profile of your best potential customers on the Web. Who are they? What are their demographics? What are their felt needs? Their real needs? Their motivations?

Then design your Web site to appeal to multiple motivations. Just make sure you begin with manageable objectives. You don't want to dream big, and then find that the time to keep the site updated is so huge that you end up with an untended Web site. Consider starting with a single motivation, and then address others once you get the first stage of your Web site marketing strategy under control.

Why in the world should someone come to your Web site? Now you have some idea.

Small Business Model

by Hank Heath

I've been continuing my work on how to get a small business to be able to get sales on the 'Net. I have scoped out the outline of a model below. Would appreciate feedback, of course.

Please bear in mind that my goal is to present to small business owners a way of taking their current business, and to provide incremental increases in their sales by promoting directly on the 'Net. As a result, their return must exceed the costs of putting up a site, or of relying upon a commercial site. This is strictly for the purposes of putting dollars in the pockets of the small business, not in the pockets of 'Net service providers. [The ISPs seem to already know how to fleece the populace. I expect cartoons in the late nineties to compare them with lawyers and used-car salesmen. Those of you who provide legitimate 'Net services should cringe at what's happening these days.]

The fundamentals of this business are based upon a few factors. As a source of ideas, I'll refer to Robert Tucker's book, Managing The Future. First, though, let's agree on an axiom or two.

Hank's First Axiom: The Internet ain't convenient, despite what the hype says. To do anything on the 'Net requires special privileges, special equipment, special software, and special techniques that are not available to most of industrial society, and not available to over 90% of the world's population.

Hank's Second Axiom: People don't come to the Internet to buy things - products nor services.

Hank's First Theorem: If you can overcome these two axioms by showing extraordinary value, people will buy your product or service over the 'Net.

If you accept these two axioms and theorem (which I cannot "prove"), the rest falls out as corollary.

You have a number of advantages you can offer a potential client:

• Speed. You can use the 'Net to deliver your products and services faster than any competitor could even think about.
• Convenience. You can make access to your business, sales, delivery of the products or services, and payment more convenient via the 'Net.
• Choice. You can provide the ability of the client to customize your product and service to their own individual wants via the 'Net.
• Value-Adding. You can make your product or service come along with additional value services that cannot be delivered outside of the 'Net.
• Customer Service. You can use the 'Net to provide outstanding CS via the 'Net - proactively and reactively.
• Quality. You can deliver higher quality than a competitor can deliver on the 'Net (oddly enough, this is rather easy to do in comparison to many 'Net service providers).

If you can sculpt your product or service to successfully deliver at least two of these advantages, you will be able to attract prospects. If you can do them with delivery superior to your competition, you will attract clients. If you can also deliver them at less cost than your competition (and still make a buck), you will be the WalMart™ of your business.

You have my model of doing non-'Net business on the 'Net in a nutshell.

Hank Heath is Vice President of Medco Systems, Inc., consultants for small business, 3 Eves Dr., Suite 304, Marlton, NJ 08053 (HankHeath@aol.com) phone 609-596-1028, fax: 609-596-8650. Reprinted by permission. Mr. Heath's comments originally appeared in the February 12, 1996 edition of Internet Sales Discussion List.